The advent of open access to peer reviewed scholarly literature in the biomedical sciences creates the opening to examine scholarship in general, and chemistry in particular, to see where and how novel forms of network technology can accelerate the scientific method. This paper examines broad trends in information access and openness with an eye towards their applications in chemistry.
Archives des mots-clés : scientific communication
Report on Integration of Data and Publications …
Report on Integration of Data and Publications :
“Scholarly communication is the foundation of modern research where empirical evidence is interpreted and communicated as published hypothesis driven research. Many current and recent reports highlight the impact of advancing technology on modern research and consequences this has on scholarly communication. As part of the ODE project this report sought to coalesce current though and opinions from numerous and diverse sources to reveal opportunities for supporting a more connected and integrated scholarly record. Four perspectives were considered, those of the Researcher who generates or reuses primary data, Publishers who provide the mechanisms to communicate research activities and Libraries & Data enters who maintain and preserve the evidence that underpins scholarly communication and the published record. This report finds the landscape fragmented and complex where competing interests can sometimes confuse and confound requirements, needs and expectations. Equally the report identifies clear opportunity for all stakeholders to directly enable a more joined up and vital scholarly record of modern research.”
URL : http://www.libereurope.eu/sites/default/files/ODE-ReportOnIntegrationOfDataAndPublication.pdf
The Transition from Print to Electronic Journals A…
The Transition from Print to Electronic Journals: A Study of College and University Libraries in Indiana :
“Objectives: This study examines what factors are considered by college and university libraries in Indiana when making the decision to cancel subscriptions to print journals when an electronic equivalent is available. The study also looks at who the primary decision makers are in this regard. Libraries at public and private institutions of varying sizes were included in the study.
Methods : An online survey was sent to seventy-three libraries in the consortium, Academic Libraries of Indiana. Structured interviews with administrators at nine libraries were also conducted.
Results: Academic libraries in Indiana use subscription cost, redundancy of formats, student preference, budget reductions and usage as the primary factors in canceling print journal subscriptions in favor of their electronic counterparts. There is also a preference for the electronic format for new subscriptions even when a print version is also available.
Conclusions: The study indicates that subscription cost is the most important consideration in the journal cancelation process with other factors also having an effect on the preference of libraries for electronic versions of journals. The study also shows that libraries at public and private colleges and universities are at different stages of moving away from print to an online-only journal format. At the same time, there is consensus that a small collection of print titles will still be needed. The primary decision-makers are librarians, faculty, and library administrators.”
URL : http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/10330
Open access institutional repositories for scholarly communication: A developing country perspective
Scholarly communication is the creation, transformation, dissemination and preservation of knowledge related to teaching, research and scholarly endeavours. Nowadays, Open Access Repositories (OARs) and Open Access (OA) has become the emerging ways to share research output, academic result and disseminating information to the academic community for better usability and visibility.
The purpose of this present study is to discuss the role of OAIR (Open Access Institutional Repository) in scholarly communication and focused how does developing country like Bangladesh may be benefited through this system.
The major focus of the present study is to familiar with different initiatives of building OAIR and Open Access (OA) in Bangladesh. In pursuing the above objectives, the present research posed the following research questions (RQs) that will guide the study as well. How OAIR can be used as an effective tool for scholarly communication?
What is the present status of the OAIR and OA initiatives in Bangladesh and what are the prospects of OAIR in Bangladesh? An analysis of the appropriate literature was carried out, focusing on papers explicitly referring to changing roles of OAIR. The study performed online searches and substantial amount of literature has been reviewed. Literature collected through internet, personal visits, and secondary sources of information has been analyzed.
Findings reveal that OAIR is very important for the scholarly communication and Bangladesh is not far behind to get the fullest advantages of the OAIR. It is suggested some directions for building OAIR and OA initiatives in Bangladesh.
It is believed that faculty and research scholars will be able to publish their research output in the proposed IR to visible their scholarly research output globally. This study no doubt will foster more research on OAIR for the improvement of Open Access scenarios in Bangladesh.
An Open Access Future? Report from the eurocancercoms project
“In 2010, the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) as a member of the Eurocancercoms FP7 project conducted a survey on professional communication activities across its European membership with particular reference to the use of the internet and barriers to communication. Over half of the survey respondents were working in basic cancer research, a further third in translational research and the remaining respondents in epidemiology or medical oncology. From a range of interesting information and opinions, the survey revealed that the internet is used by 94% of cancer researchers for professional activities every day with the majority accessing PubMed and online journals daily or 2-3 times a week. These simple statistics place access to published research findings online at the centre of support for cancer researchers’ work: a crucial sharing of information which can accelerate progress in the scientific battle with cancer.
While the survey had not focussed on Open Access specifically, comment banks and discussions at consensus meetings following the publication of the survey results highlighted the issue of access to subscription journals, the barrier to essential and urgent information that a ‘paywall’ creates, and the need for free access. A second survey picking up on the issue of Open Access publishing has now been completed. This paper shares the results of that survey, which was again conducted across the European membership of EACR, and cross references responses with selected data from the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) 2011 which was undertaken across all academic disciplines. The SOAP data is freely accessible and can be mined for information by anyone who wishes to use it. A number of questions were included in the survey that mirrored those used by SOAP, allowing the direct comparison of results. In this article a comparison has been made between the responses provided by cancer researchers and the 7,433 respondents to the SOAP survey from the Biological Sciences. (Over 43,000 responses were received across all disciplines to the SOAP survey.)
As a conclusion and invitation to further discussion, this paper also contributes to the debate around subscription and Open Access publishing, supporting the case for accelerating the progress towards Open Access publishing of cancer research articles as a particularly supportive way of assisting all researchers to make unhindered progress with their work.”
URL : http://www.eacr.org/about/20110820_Open%20Access%20Future.pdf
The internet and science communication blurring the boundaries…
The internet and science communication: blurring the boundaries :
“Scientific research is heavily dependent on communication and collaboration. Research does not exist in a bubble; scientific work must be communicated in order to add it to the body of knowledge within a scientific community, so that its members may ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’ and benefit from all that has come before. The effectiveness of scientific communication is crucial to the pace of scientific progress: in all its forms it enables ideas to be formulated, results to be compared, and replications and improvements to be made. The sharing of science is a foundational aspect of the scientific method. This paper, part of the policy research within the FP7 EUROCANCERCOMS project, discusses how the Internet has changed communication by cancer researchers and how it has the potential to change it still more in the future. It will detail two broad types of communication: formal and informal, and how these are changing with the use of new web tools and technologies.”
URL : http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2011/08/29/an-open-access-future-report-from-the-eurocancercoms-project/
Wikis in scholarly publishing Scientific research is…
Wikis in scholarly publishing :
“Scientific research is a process concerned with the creation, collective accumulation, contextualization, updating and maintenance of knowledge. Wikis provide an environment that allows to collectively accumulate, contextualize, update and maintain knowledge in a coherent and transparent fashion. Here, we examine the potential of wikis as platforms for scholarly publishing. In the hope to stimulate further discussion, the article itself was drafted on Species ID – http://species-id.net; a wiki that hosts a prototype for wiki-based scholarly publishing – where it can be updated, expanded or otherwise improved.”
URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/q42617538838t6j2/